EMC Provides Full-on Illustration of How Companies Need to Transform
The full-on message at this year's EMC World 2012 is Transformation. Be it how the cloud is transforming business, transforming IT or transforming you, everything that EMC is talking about at this conference somehow points back to transformation. But maybe the most poignant message coming out of EMC CEO's Joe Tucci's keynote on Monday, May 21, was how EMC has transformed itself over the years to remain a relevant and leading player in information technology.
Comments about Joe Tucci's keynote could be found both in the blogosphere and on the trade show floor in the hours following his presentation. However what I think many are failing to mention (and which Tucci covered in his keynote) is that EMC itself provides an excellent template for companies to follow as they look to transform themselves to stay relevant in the years to come.
Say what you will about EMC (and EMC's competitors have had plenty to say about it as evidenced from the deluge of emails I have received from them in the past 24 hours urging me to point out EMC's flaws,) one thing almost all of them have yet to prove is that they can transform themselves as successfully as EMC has over the past two decades. In an industry that regularly promotes and pushes change onto its customers, it is ironic that the companies that are most apt to push change on its clients are themselves sometimes the least likely to change and adapt to the constantly changing environment in which they find themselves.
To a large degree, the same cannot be said to be true of EMC. Granted, it is guilty of some of the aforementioned transgressions as, having once been a customer of EMC, I have seen first hand how it tries to push and force change on its customers. However, I have also witnessed over the last decade how it has softened its stance on many positions on which it was once adamant and transformed itself to either develop or acquire technologies that it needed to remain relevant and viable in customer accounts.
Further, more than just acquiring these technologies, it has then gone on to invest in many of them and made them relevant to the customers it seeks to serve. I found it humorous yet poignant that one of the marching orders that Tucci has issued to all of EMC is to reflect what EMC's logo (EMC2) represents: Everyone Makes Customer Calls.
The fact that is has evolved to live and die by this mantra was evident by the 13,000 - 15,000 people in attendance at EMC World. Not only was this about a 50% increase in attendance over the EMC World 2011 show, it more importantly represented the status of a company that did more than transform, it has transformed in such a way that it remains relevant to a growing number of customers.
Granted, the 40+ product announcements it had yesterday on the first day of the show certainly helped to support EMC's assertion that it was transforming its product lines but they also bore evidence that EMC has transformed how itself thinks. One such example was that it announced that the new VMAX will now be able to virtualize the storage from the "bad guys" - HDS and IBM.
Granted, both HDS and IBM have virtualized other storage for years but if I were HDS and IBM, I'd be more than a little concerned that a VMAX could not virtualize my stuff. Now EMC is doing to them what they have attempted to do to EMC for years, minimize the value of the software on the storage array and relegate the storage array to just dumb disk.
The risk both HDS and IBM now run is that with the EMC VMAX now having the ability to virtualize their storage, they may be relegated to the classification of "dumb disk." Honestly, I think there is a greater risk of that happening to them than HDS and IBM relegating EMC to the status of "dumb disk" just due to the maturity of the EMC Engenuity OS, the fact that is it is generally accepted as "stable," and the superior management interface that EMC has built on top of it.
EMC still has some gaps to fills and some areas in which it needs to transform but any company its size does. However where EMC appears to differ significantly from its competitors - and for the better - is that largely unlike its competitors it continually examines itself and looks for ways to transform itself to ensure it remains competitive. Once it does, it then either generally acquires or develops products to remain competitive.
It is because EMC continually engages in this constant process of transformation - maybe more so than any other technology company on the planet - that it remains so formidable in the technology space. This also helps to explain why its competitors feel obliged to continually point out its shortcomings. Either intuitively or unconsciously they recognize that one of their greatest weaknesses - their inability to transform themselves - is also one of EMC's greatest assets.
Read my top three takeaways from last year's EMC World.
Comments about Joe Tucci's keynote could be found both in the blogosphere and on the trade show floor in the hours following his presentation. However what I think many are failing to mention (and which Tucci covered in his keynote) is that EMC itself provides an excellent template for companies to follow as they look to transform themselves to stay relevant in the years to come.
Say what you will about EMC (and EMC's competitors have had plenty to say about it as evidenced from the deluge of emails I have received from them in the past 24 hours urging me to point out EMC's flaws,) one thing almost all of them have yet to prove is that they can transform themselves as successfully as EMC has over the past two decades. In an industry that regularly promotes and pushes change onto its customers, it is ironic that the companies that are most apt to push change on its clients are themselves sometimes the least likely to change and adapt to the constantly changing environment in which they find themselves.
To a large degree, the same cannot be said to be true of EMC. Granted, it is guilty of some of the aforementioned transgressions as, having once been a customer of EMC, I have seen first hand how it tries to push and force change on its customers. However, I have also witnessed over the last decade how it has softened its stance on many positions on which it was once adamant and transformed itself to either develop or acquire technologies that it needed to remain relevant and viable in customer accounts.
Further, more than just acquiring these technologies, it has then gone on to invest in many of them and made them relevant to the customers it seeks to serve. I found it humorous yet poignant that one of the marching orders that Tucci has issued to all of EMC is to reflect what EMC's logo (EMC2) represents: Everyone Makes Customer Calls.
The fact that is has evolved to live and die by this mantra was evident by the 13,000 - 15,000 people in attendance at EMC World. Not only was this about a 50% increase in attendance over the EMC World 2011 show, it more importantly represented the status of a company that did more than transform, it has transformed in such a way that it remains relevant to a growing number of customers.
Granted, the 40+ product announcements it had yesterday on the first day of the show certainly helped to support EMC's assertion that it was transforming its product lines but they also bore evidence that EMC has transformed how itself thinks. One such example was that it announced that the new VMAX will now be able to virtualize the storage from the "bad guys" - HDS and IBM.
Granted, both HDS and IBM have virtualized other storage for years but if I were HDS and IBM, I'd be more than a little concerned that a VMAX could not virtualize my stuff. Now EMC is doing to them what they have attempted to do to EMC for years, minimize the value of the software on the storage array and relegate the storage array to just dumb disk.
The risk both HDS and IBM now run is that with the EMC VMAX now having the ability to virtualize their storage, they may be relegated to the classification of "dumb disk." Honestly, I think there is a greater risk of that happening to them than HDS and IBM relegating EMC to the status of "dumb disk" just due to the maturity of the EMC Engenuity OS, the fact that is it is generally accepted as "stable," and the superior management interface that EMC has built on top of it.
EMC still has some gaps to fills and some areas in which it needs to transform but any company its size does. However where EMC appears to differ significantly from its competitors - and for the better - is that largely unlike its competitors it continually examines itself and looks for ways to transform itself to ensure it remains competitive. Once it does, it then either generally acquires or develops products to remain competitive.
It is because EMC continually engages in this constant process of transformation - maybe more so than any other technology company on the planet - that it remains so formidable in the technology space. This also helps to explain why its competitors feel obliged to continually point out its shortcomings. Either intuitively or unconsciously they recognize that one of their greatest weaknesses - their inability to transform themselves - is also one of EMC's greatest assets.
Read my top three takeaways from last year's EMC World.
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EMC has done a great job of listening to me over the years. Sometimes I see that enough people thought like I did and EMC put that into a product or practice. I've been told a number of times that their best ideas come from customers. Of course the example given is SRDF for Symmetrix. Not sure if any of the ideas came from me yet though lol. No royalty payments coming my way yet either.
Everyone does make customer calls at EMC. You are right, they are an excellent example of what other companies should be doing.... Listening to customers. Many of the companies I deal with are doing this though.
Who really drives the technology? The customer. Just like in our internal shops, the business (our customer) is driving what we do. Customers drive what the vendors do. If there is no demand what what you have then you likely won't succeed.